MASTERPIECES OF 19th-CENTURY WESTERN ART FROM HARVARD'S WINTHROP COLLECTION TO TOUR TO LONDON, NEW YORK, AND LYON

Marks First Presentation of Winthrop Works Outside of Harvard University Art Museums since Collection Bequeathed in 1943

Exhibition Will Include Works by Blake, Burne-Jones, Daumier, David, van Gogh, Homer, Ingres, Renior, Rodin, Sargent, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Whistler

Cambridge, MA - January 15, 2003 -An exhibition featuring masterpieces of 19th-century Western art from the Harvard University Art Museums' Grenville L. Winthrop Collection will begin an international tour in March 2003, marking their first presentation outside of the Art Museums since the collection was bequeathed in 1943. Highlighting more than 200 paintings, drawings, and sculptures from approximately 1800 to 1920, A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University will include works by Blake, Burne-Jones, Degas, Gericault, Homer, Ingres, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Rodin, Sargent, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Whistler. Among the works featured will be Jacques-Louis David's study for The Oath of the Tennis Court (c. 1790), William Blake's Christ Blessing (c. 1810), Jean-Auguste-Dominic Ingres' Odalisque with a Slave, and Whistler's Nocturne in Blue and Silver (c. 1871-72).

Organized by the Harvard University Art Museums, A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University is curated by Stephan Wolohojian, curator of Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums. It will travel to the following museums:

• Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, March 15, 2003-May 26, 2003
• The National Gallery, London, June 25-September 14, 2003
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 20, 2003-January 11, 2004

The Winthrop Collection of more than 4,000 works includes outstanding holdings of 19th-century Western art and early Chinese art as well as works in almost every other collecting area of the Art Museums. The collection forms the core of the Fogg Art Museum's and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum's holdings, and it has played a pivotal role in shaping the collections and legacy of the Art Museums. It also serves as a foundation for teaching, research, and professional training programs.

"Grenville Winthrop's gift transformed the Harvard University Art Museums and exponentially increased the range of opportunities for teaching and research," said Marjorie Cohn, acting director of the Harvard University Art Museums. "His choice of artworks set standards for beauty, connoisseurship, and condition. Winthrop was exceptional not only for the gift he gave, but also for the legacy he helped to establish. It has encouraged other Harvard graduates to make major gifts to the Art Museums for the training and development of Harvard's students and scholars and for public display. Joseph Pulitzer, Maida and George Abrams, and Stuart Cary Welch have furthered this tradition, and we continue to be grateful for the role that all of these individuals play in strengthening our mission."

Exhibition of 19th-Century Western Art
A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University will feature French, British, and American paintings, drawings, and sculptures selected from Winthrop's 19th-century collection, including works by European masters such as Courbet, Manet, Matisse, Renoir, and van Gogh, and by the most progressive American artists of the later 19th century, including Homer, Inness, Sargent, and Whistler. The exhibition will offer insight into Winthrop's collecting interests such as his preference for depictions of historical events, literary themes, and portraits, and his unique interest in bringing together the French and British artistic traditions. Winthrop assembled a significant collection of works by Pre-Raphaelites, and the exhibition will showcase works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and William Holman Hunt, among others. In this respect, the collection remains one of the most important ever assembled.

"Winthrop's decision to make 19th-century Western art one of the areas of great depth in his collection altered profoundly the character of the Fogg Art Museum's collections," said Stephan Wolohojian, curator of Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts. "The 19th-century works in his collection form the soul of the Fogg and are distinguished by their exceptional range and beauty. This exhibition is a monumental opportunity for scholars, students, and the public from around the world to look through the discerning eye of one of this country's great collectors."

Major strengths of the exhibition include 35 works by Ingres, as well as groups of paintings and drawings by Blake, Burne-Jones, Gericault, Rossetti, and Whistler. Six works in the exhibition are by Gustave Moreau.

The Boston Elevated Railway Negative Collection-The so-called BERy collection is part of a much larger archive of approximately 30,000 glass-plate negatives that document the building of rapid transit lines in Boston and its surrounding towns in the early 1900s. The more than 600 negatives at Harvard, together with the others held by the Cambridge Historical Commission and the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, provide an invaluable record of the city's architecture and of the construction techniques used to build the Boston Elevated Railway lines.

The exhibition will include Jacques-Louis David's large study for The Oath of the Tennis Court (c. 1790) as well as the portrait of his friend, the revolutionary Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, one of the instigators of the oath taken in the Versailles tennis court; David painted him in exile in Brussels in 1817. David's sketchbooks, containing nearly 100 studies for The Coronation of Napoléon I (le Sacre), will also be included.

Winthrop also assembled one of the finest groups of work by William Blake. The exhibition will present pages from his celebrated Book of Job as well as one of Blake's rare paintings, Christ Blessing. Thomas Hope's commission for an illustrated Divine Comedy, by John Flaxman, will also be exhibited for the first time in over 80 years.

Paintings and drawings by Edward Burne-Jones, including Days of Creation (1870-76) and Pan and Psyche (1872-74), will be on view. Winthrop's prized works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti-The Blessed Damozel (1875-78) and La Donna della inestra (1879) will also be included.

A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University will include exceptional works by American artists such as Homer, Whistler, Sargent, and Innes. Homer's Mink Pond (1891) will be among an important group of American watercolors included in the exhibition. In 1941, Winthrop acquired the Henderson collection of works by Whistler, which will be represented in the exhibition by his masterpiece Nocturne in Blue and Silver (c. 1871-72). Innes' October Noon (1891) will be one of several works appearing at the New York venue only.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue produced by The Metropolitan Museum of Art with contributions by 60 authors who are experts in their field of study.

Grenville L. Winthrop
Grenville L. Winthrop (1864-1943) assembled a collection of more than 4,000 works of art that was commensurate in stature to other New York collections such as those of Pierpont Morgan, Benjamin Altman, H.O. Havermeyer, Henry Clay Frick, George and Florence Blumenthal, and Robert Lehman. Although Winthrop's interests as a collector ranged from Chinese Buddhist sculpture, to Peruvian gold, to prints by Dürer, the collection's areas of exceptional strength and depth include early Chinese works of art and 18th- and 19th-century British and French drawings, ceramics, and clocks. The Winthrop Collection's holdings of 19th-century Western works of art include 700 British, French, and American drawings, as well as 180 paintings predominantly by French and British 19th-century masters as well as more than 100 sculptures. The collection's holdings of early Chinese art include one of the largest, finest, and most comprehensive collections of archaic Chinese jades, as well as bronze ritual vessels that rank among the finest in the world. Winthrop rarely loaned these works during his lifetime.

Drawings, Paintings, and Sculpture Collections at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum
The Winthrop Collection's drawings form an important group within the Fogg Art Museum's holdings of approximately 12,000 European and American drawings from the 14th century to the present. The drawing collection is the finest and most comprehensive of any university art museum in the United States and ranks among the most important public collections in this country. The collection combines masterpieces from the American and principal European schools with significant depths in French and British works. These strengths greatly enhance the teaching and research potential of the collection.

• The Fogg has one of the most important holdings of drawings by David (nearly 100), Gericault (20), and Ingres (50) outside of France.
• The 55 watercolors and drawings by Blake, 50 by Beardsley, and numerous works by the Pre-Raphaelites together make up the most outstanding groups of those artists' work outside Great Britain.
• In the American school, the collection includes more than 20 Homer watercolors, more than 500 drawings and sketchbooks by Sargent, and a group of drawings and pastels by Whistler.
• Other artists well represented in the collection are Courbet, Degas, Fragonard, Picasso, Rembrandt, and Tiepolo.
• Major strengths include French works of the 17th and early 19th centuries (in both fields the most comprehensive holdings in any U.S. collection), 16th-century Italian and 17th-century Dutch drawings, German drawings of the 18th and 19th centuries, and American and English 19th-century works.

The Winthrop Collection forms a significant portion of the Fogg Art Museum's collection of nearly 2,000 European and American paintings. The painting collection is the finest of any college or university art museum in the United States and compares favorably with the finest public museums in the country.

• The particular strengths of the collection are early Italian Renaissance painting, 19th-century French, 19th-century British, and American painting (including the largest holdings of works by Copley in the country).
• Nearly 30 cultures and more than 850 artists are represented in the collection.
• Among the highlights are works by Cézanne, Degas, Fra Angelico, Ingres, Monet, Moreau, Picasso, Poussin, Renoir, Rossetti, van Gogh, and Whistler.

The sculptures in the Winthrop Collection are complemented by the Fogg Art Museum's collection of more than 1,000 works of sculpture. The collection includes holdings of French and Spanish Romanesque sculpture, Italian Renaissance plaquettes, a group of 17th-century Roman terracotta studies by Bernini and others, and 19th-century French sculpture (notably by Rodin and Barye).

About the Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums are one of the world's leading arts institutions, with the Arthur M. Sackler, Busch-Reisinger, and Fogg art museums, the Straus Center for Conservation, and the U.S. headquarters for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, an excavation project in western Turkey.

The Harvard University Art Museums are distinguished by the range and depth of their collections, their groundbreaking exhibitions, and the original research of their staff. As an integral part of the Harvard community, the three art museums serve as a resource for all students, adding a special dimension to their areas of study. The public is welcome to experience the collections and exhibitions as well as to enjoy lectures, symposia, and other programs.

For more than a century, the Harvard University Art Museums have been the nation's premier training ground for museum professionals and scholars and are renowned for their role in the development of the discipline of art history in this country.

Location and Hours
The Fogg Art Museum and the Busch-Reisinger Museum are located at 32 Quincy Street in Cambridge. The Arthur M. Sackler Museum is located next door at 485 Broadway. Each Museum is a short walk from the Harvard Square MBTA station.

Hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Sunday 1 - 5 p.m.; the Museums are closed on national holidays. Admission is $6.50; $5 for seniors; $5 for students; and free for those under 18 years of age. The Museums are free to everyone Saturday mornings, 10 a.m. - noon. The Harvard University Art Museums receive support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. More detailed information is available at 617-495-9400 or on the Internet at www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.

# # #

For more information on this appointment or the Harvard University Art Museums, please contact:

Matthew Barone
Harvard University Art Museums
tel 617-495-2397; fax 617-496-9762
mbarone@fas.harvard.edu

or

Kim Gilbert/Allison Derusha
Resnicow Schroeder Associates
tel 212-671-5157; fax 212-595-8354
kgilbert@resnicowschroeder.com
aderusha@resnicowschroeder.com